


Recovery

by inspiration_assaulted



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Doesn't even touch Series 3, M/M, Mental Instability, Mind Palace, Post-Reichenbach, So much angst, of a sort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 14:12:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1229407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inspiration_assaulted/pseuds/inspiration_assaulted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Fall, when they are apart, they have to find ways to push on, ways to keep on living. Sometimes, those ways get in the way when they come back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Most of this story was inspired by the moment in The Empty Hearse when Sherlock hears John's voice and talks to it a bit. I just took the idea and ran with it, and nearly everything came from that one scene.
> 
> Except Mycroft.
> 
> Also, fair warning: I cried (a lot) and I wrote the damn thing. You may want to have some tissues near by. And some coco. Or tea.
> 
> Sorry, not sorry.

John used to ask how Sherlock, the man who saw everything, could be so absorbed in his own mind as to carry on whole conversations with him while he wasn’t even anywhere near the flat. How could they had talked about that on Tuesday, he would ask, when he was in Glasgow then?

It was quite simple, really. He didn’t know John was gone because he didn’t seem gone. The flat didn’t feel empty or silent because John was always with him. He couldn’t explain it, but John was always with him in some way.

He didn’t even really notice it himself until _after_.

Running across the world, skipping from hidey-hole to secret base to underground network, he finally understood it. It was in a cave near Gereshk, Afghanistan, not far from the very place that John was once stationed, not far from the small patch of sand where John’s life bled away from him, that he knew.

There was a place in his mind palace, a door he’d never opened before. It wasn’t in a place he often went near, in the carefully-guarded wing where he kept his sentimental attachments. He wouldn’t have ever noticed it, likely, if he hadn’t been dreadfully cold and bored and possessed with the slightly lunatic desire to remember the exact taste of his favourite childhood biscuit (chocolate Hobnobs; Mycroft always scoffed.)

But there, at the end of the hall, was a door. It was a simple door, painted a glossy black and affixed with brass numbers, but it stood out to him. He couldn’t remember putting it there, and anyways it was an exterior kind of door.

In fact, a very particular exterior door. The door to 221B Baker Street.

Inside were the doors to Mrs Hudson’s flat and the basement flat, and the seventeen stairs up to his own. A quick check into Mrs Hudson’s showed it to be an exact recall, of course, set with a full tea service and plate of fresh biscuits, but empty of the woman herself. All his rooms were like that, though. No one lived in the mind palace but him, and occasionally Mycroft when he needed someone to scold him.

Still, it was with a cautious tread that he crept upstairs, pushing aside the door to his own flat. It, too, was a perfect replica of the last time he’d left it, right down to the bent corners of the skull poster and the light layer of dust on the top shelf of books. John and Mrs Hudson couldn’t reach up there to clean, and Sherlock simply couldn’t be bothered. Nothing was out of place or missing, but he still stopped dead in his tracks.

John was there. John, there, in his chair, wearing one of his ridiculous jumpers that made him look like a librarian, calmly sipping his tea and holding out a mug for Sherlock to take.

“Took you long enough to show up,” he quipped, not frustrated, but fond. Struck dumb, Sherlock could only take the proffered mug and sink into his chair. “I was beginning to wonder if you ever came out this way.”

The tea was perfect. Not that it was the best cup of tea he’d ever had, but it was perfect in that it was exactly as John always made it. Not quite enough milk and just a touch too bitter, from John’s habit of getting distracted and over-steeping the leaves.

It was home in a cup. Sentiment.

“How did you get here?” he managed to ask after a long moment of staring. John just smiled.

“You put me here, I expect. Just like you put everything else here.” Sherlock opened his mouth to speak again, but John cut him off. “Oh, does it matter if it was on purpose or not? You did it, had to be you. No one else could do. Why not just go with it, yeah? You can drop by once in a while. I know you’re alone out there, but I can keep you company in here.”

“How long have you been here?” Sherlock asked wonderingly. John shrugged, shifting in his chair.

“Don’t really know, do I? Time’s not the same in here. I think it’s only when you visit, when you properly walk through the halls, that it moves at all. Otherwise, it just stands still. I know it’s passing, but it has no meaning on me, really. It’s like the whole place is in stasis. To me, I just existed one morning. This morning, in fact. I rolled out of bed, got dressed and made tea, and then you showed up.” Another shrug. “For me, I’ve been here, aware, for an hour, maybe. For you? Might be since this morning, might be since I met you. You’ve always seemed to talk to me when I wasn’t around, _out there_.”

“I made you watch,” Sherlock blurted, unable to stop himself. “When I jumped, I made you watch. You touched me, tried to find my pulse.”

“And I went into shock rather quickly,” John finished for him, calmly. Sherlock frowned.

“Are you angry with me?”

“I don’t know.” John shrugged and spread his hands. “I am what you know about me. You can’t know how I reacted later, so neither can I. I probably will be angry, yes; you know that much. And I’ll probably be depressed and reclusive, and I might just punch Mycroft in the face if I see him again. That much you can predict. Anything else? Beyond us. You.” He shrugged again. “Then again, I also know why you did it, in here. Out there, I have no idea. I just know that my best friend, Sherlock Holmes, is dead.”

He says it without an emotion. None of the heat of someone who was duped and angry. None of the sadness of a survivor, none of the pain. Sherlock can’t possibly know how the real John Watson would say such a thing, so the John here can only state it is a fact.

But somehow, that’s enough. Just to hear it hurts. Just to be reminded of what John really thought of him, refusing to the very end to believe Sherlock had ever tricked him.

Right up the end, where Sherlock tricked him.

In that moment, Sherlock Holmes does not need to see how John would react. He does not need to know how John would say it; if he would shout in anger and rage at a fearful, unsuspecting questioner, or if he would break completely, his words cutting off without air in places, tears on his face. He does not need to read John’s emotion in his expressions and words and bearing. He does not need John’s emotion to spark reactions in his own distant heart.

He feels quite enough for the both of them.

Abruptly, he stands from his chair and flees this part of his mind palace. He can’t take looking at John, hearing his words, accepting his kindness, for one more second, not when he knows it isn’t real. Not when he can’t return to his John, the real John, at any moment. Not when he knows this John is only a mental construct containing the collection of all his information on John Watson, Doctor and Soldier and Blogger. Not when he can predict every basic reaction this John will have, because that means it isn’t his John. His John is the one he cannot predict, can never predict.

Sherlock opens his eyes to the real world once more, returned to the Afghanistan mountain cave near Gereshk, so close to where John once was, and he can’t help but wonder, irrational as he knows it is, whether there might be some lingering presence of his there, even two years later.

It doesn’t help, and Sherlock can do nothing else but shed bitter tears into the sand and dust and grit.

* * *

 

On average, there is just under fifteen pounds of air weighing down on each square inch of a person’s body. Due to factors such as exposure and evolution, a human being rarely, if ever, notices that fifteen pounds per square inch pressing on them for every second of every hour of every day of their lives. In fact, such an environment is the ideal operating condition.

Grief has a funny way of changing things.

John could feel every one of those pounds as they lay heavy across every square inch of his body for every second of every hour of every day since his best friend fell, jumped, from the rooftop of St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Fifteen pounds of air made tangible by extra weight of hopes and dreams and fears and the laughter they would never get to share again. Made thicker by the memories of the laughter they did share, the jokes and smiles and adrenaline and cups of tea and the thrill of the chase and poking fun at the Met and-

He could feel it all pressing on him like the six feet of dirt that lay on Sherlock Holmes.

Guilt and anger and pain and sadness, oh the sadness, the crippling loneliness of a man who has lost his way in life again and knows he will never find it, doomed to wander as a shadow among the living, they pressed down on him. The emotion tugged at him, slowed his movements, pulled his shoulders and his brow to the floor below, weighed heavy on his old injury, buckling his leg, and John found himself once more unable to walk unaided.

He got a new cane. The last one held to many memories, of running and breathless laughter and Italian food, it only weighed him down more, tugging at his soul. His new cane was mahogany with a carved grip that sometimes, when he let his mind wander, sometimes reminded him of the curling detail at the end of the neck of a violin. The comparison was there, but it wasn’t glaring, not to anyone who wasn’t John. He had steadfastly refused to carry anything bamboo or with a curved grip, feeling that they were wrong on anything but an umbrella and knowing he would never, ever, in his life, carry an umbrella again. He would sooner catch his death of cold, irrational as it was.

“John?”

If Mrs Hudson’s soft voice, her touch, her presence, startled him, John made no sign. He sat exactly as he had sat for hours, for days. He didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t cry, only barely blinked, and he never tore his eyes from the empty chair in front of him, violin case propped in the crook of the armrest, all of it gathering dust.

* * *

 

It’s two months before Sherlock is desperate enough to go back into that hidden place in his mind palace, and this time he’s in an alley in Belarus and it’s that time of the year when the nights are just starting to get cold, and Sherlock suddenly cannot stop longing for the fireplace at Baker Street. So he enters, hesitantly, almost afraid that John will be there, or not be there, and he isn’t quite sure which one he is more afraid of.

But John is there, and so is the fire, and there is a fresh cup of tea waiting for him on the arm of the chair. Just like John.

“I don’t know why you’re here,” he started, but John scoffed and he stopped. “What?”

“You don’t know why I’m here,” John repeated. He had that little smile that usually meant he knew something Sherlock didn’t. It was the same smile he’d had when Moriarty had sent them Connie Prince’s picture.

“You know I hate when you repeat things, John.” Sherlock definitely wasn’t pouting. Of course not.

“Sorry.” John didn’t look very sorry. “I just think it’s a little funny. You, not knowing your own mind.”

“What do you mean?” Sherlock demanded.

“I think you know exactly why I, of all the people you know, have a place in your mind,” he said softly. “And maybe you’re not ready to admit it to yourself, but you know.”

Sherlock threw his teacup into the empty hearth, barely enjoying the sharp noise of it shattering as he stormed out of the flat.

“You have to admit it soon!” John called after him. “You can’t run away from yourself!”

* * *

 

Detective Sergeant Greg Lestrade was a man in captivity. The only reason NSY hadn’t gotten rid of him was because he was a damn good officer, with or without Sherlock Holmes. However, he obviously couldn’t be trusted to a team of his own again just yet, so they shunted him away into a little shared office to deal with petty thefts and muggings on good days and the least interesting cold cases on all the rest. He was a man who thrived on company, in the hustle and bustle of a crowd, kept in a windowless box.

So, he took walks. Lots of walks, whenever he could manage, whenever it was light out and sometimes when it was not. Without his wife around, there was no one to chide him on the strange hours he kept as habit. Without any importance at the Met, there was no one who care enough to call him out on returning late from lunch.

The lunch walks were his favourites. The city was alive then, in the daylight. People were out and about, normal people with normal lives that had never been touched by a mad genius, someone they had saved and suddenly lost again. He could pretend to be one of those people then.

Though sometimes, on one of the good days, he worked through lunch and on to dark on an actual case, then he saw a different side of London. In the dark, he sought out, on purpose or by instinct, the quietest streets. There was a lingering feeling of danger in the dark and silent alleyways that had his heart pumping and his hand finding his torch in his pocket. Sometimes, crossing the city alone and on foot, those were the only times he felt like he was free again.

It was one of the good days, a string of daylight assaults in the allies around a busy pawn shop that kept them busy until nearly midnight. Greg gravitated toward the river that night, his feet finding their way onto the Westminster Bridge. He stopped at one end, taking in the sights, the great iconic clock tower lit up and reflecting on the surface of the Thames. It was a quiet night on the bridge, late enough in the year for the tourists to be mostly gone and just cold enough to deter the rest from spending much time outside.

There’s a man about halfway down the bridge, he notices. A man who is staring at the water, as still as the lamppost beside him, his shoulders slumped and leaning heavily on his cane. Greg watches him with an idle fascination for a while, both of them silent and motionless. His posture speaks of a deep grief and despair, and Greg wonders who he has lost. He has seen too much loss in these past months.

It’s not until the man straightens suddenly, squaring his shoulders with determination, that Greg recognises him. The cane threw him off, he figures. He hasn’t seen John Watson with a cane since that first day, in Brixton. He pushes off the rail to step forward, then hesitates.

Would John want to see him? He was the closest to Sherlock, even if everyone else had known him longer. No one, not even Mycroft Holmes or Mrs Hudson, had known him like John had. No wonder everyone who saw them thought they were together. Sherlock had been the centre of John’s whole world, and Greg didn’t know how he would react in John’s position. Certainly, he’d blame the people who didn’t believe like he did, the people who doubted and left Sherlock out to dry in the eleventh hour. It seemed like John did, too. His reception to Donovan and Anderson at the funeral had been…well, ‘cold’ would be the kindest way to describe it.

Greg had looked back into the reflections on the Thames while he considered. He decided to keep to himself and leave John to his thoughts, but something tugged at his mind to stay and watch, something in the primal core of his training as a police officer that defied definition or reason. It was an instinct, nothing more, but he had learned to trust his instincts over nearly twenty years on the force. He didn’t know why it pulled at him now, but experience had shown he would in the end.

Understanding followed as soon as he looked back at John. His cane abandoned on the pavement beside him, the doctor had perched himself on the waist-high rail, feet dangling far above the smooth waters below. He seemed to be hesitating, but Greg knew John, knew he was only taking a moment, making sure his every movement was carefully done, never one to turn away from fear.

Greg was running forward, ripping off his coat and calling for an ambulance before he ever had a conscious thought of purpose. Already, John was leaning forward, sliding down the rail, hands tensing to push off.

“JOHN!”

The doctor disappeared from sight, but Greg kept running, swearing violently as he vaulted the rail to follow.

He split the water neatly, holding back a gasp at the chill, pushing desperately toward the last place he had seen John. He rammed up against the unconscious man, almost by accident, and hauled him toward the surface as best he could, weighed down by the surprisingly solid man and their wet clothes, looping an arm under him to keep his head above water as he fought his way toward the bank.

The ambulance arrived before they did, followed by a squad car. It was the people who climbed out of the car who nearly made Greg turn them both around and head for the other bank instead. The black car, blatant in its inconspicuousness, only added to that desire.

He hauled John up with exhausted arms and handed him directly to the paramedics, accepting a shock blanket before he turned to the gathered people.

“Leave,” he said coldly. “He wouldn’t want you to see him like this. He wouldn’t to see you ever again, in fact, and I think you know that. So turn around and go.”

Donovan sneered at him from beside DI Dimmock, whose team she’d been reassigned to after his…departmental change. Dimmock just looked confused.

“You’re going to have to get me a better reason than that, Lestrade,” he said. “You called in with practically no information. You can’t be picky about who responds.”

“Well I didn’t have much time when he was already jumping off the bloody bridge, did I?” he responded, not warming in the least. He could see Mycroft approaching calmly, swinging his umbrella casually. Bastard. “You want a statement? Fine, go ahead. Attempted suicide from extreme grief. He jumped, I reacted as best I could. Got it?”

“And why did you jump in after him?” Dimmock asked, eyes narrowed. “Seems a bit of an overreaction, don’t you think?”

“Because I know him. He’s a good friend of mine, and he doesn’t deserve to die. He didn’t deserve what happened to him either, and your presence is only going to remind him of it, so I’ll tell you again; leave. Don’t talk to him.” He raised his voice, including Mycroft in his address, but no one made any move to go.

“Why should we?” Donovan asked, still sneering. God, he hated her sometimes. “Why should a perfectly capable response team leave when you say so, Sergeant?” She emphasised his title, looking to draw a reaction from him, but he only met her gaze with all the hatred he felt. Hatred for her, for what he had become, for his own doubt, for the whole damn situation.

“Because that’s John Watson over there,” he said, and he could only barely enjoy her flinch. “Because he’s made up his mind to die, and if you know John Watson even half as much as I think you do, then you know that he is a man that follows through, no matter what.” They both flinched back, and Greg took a step forward. Even Mycroft stopped, his umbrella finally still. “And because you’re bloody idiots if you don’t know that seeing you will only make. It. Worse,” he spat, then turned on his heel and strode away, over to where John was sitting in the back of the ambulance wrapped in a blanket, staring at it, watched carefully by a worried-looking paramedic. Greg walked right up to him, disturbed when he never even twitched, and bent down to whisper in his ear.

“I believe in Sherlock Holmes.”

* * *

 

John thought the heaviness would be gone, once he was dead. Actually, he’d thought any concept of thought would be gone, too. That was one of the reasons he was rather attracted to the idea. But no, there was still that weight on him, pressing down, pushing him into the earth, dragging at every inch like wet clothes.

Oh. Of course wet clothes. He’d just jumped into the Thames, after all. Right in front of Parliament, too. A statement, really, even if he hadn’t meant it to be. His last ‘fuck you’ to Mycroft Holmes and the British Government, because it was Mycroft’s fault after all, of course it was Mycroft’s fault when they couldn’t just kill the bastard when they had him and they let him free to spin out his little stories based on everything Mycroft had told him, so much for brotherly love and loyalty, yeah?

He was distracted by a flash of orange on his chest and arms, when had that got there? A shock blanket, why did they always have to give out shock blankets, didn’t they see he was trying to recover after all he’d made up his mind, no one was changing it now.

_Look, I’ve got a blanket._

John wanted to shove it away, rip it from his shoulders and throw it far across the Thames, let it sink into the murky depth like he wanted to. But the weight dragged on him, and it was far easier to sit and stare and try not to think or feel.

Someone was coming towards him, someone also dripping wet who was familiar. Greg Lestrade. John supposed he had Greg to thank for sitting in the back of an ambulance once again. He didn’t want to see Greg, didn’t want to be reminded of all the cases they’d worked together on, the camaraderie he’d thrown away when Sherlock needed it the most, didn’t want anything to do with him, but Greg was still coming towards him and leaning down and speaking in John’s ear.

“I believe in Sherlock Holmes.”

The world was still blurring around John but Greg’s voice gave him an anchor, something to hold on to and he looked up. Greg’s face showed only weariness and pain and sincerity.

“I’m sorry for what’s about to happen,” he said. “I tried to get them to go, but…I’m sorry.”

John didn’t know exactly what he meant, but he caught enough to know it was about to get very painful. He gripped Greg’s elbow, hard enough to bruise probably, but the detective didn’t flinch.

“Stay.”

“Of course,” he replied, and he busied himself with one-handedly arranging John’s blanket around him to provide more warmth, never mind that nothing felt particularly warm to John anymore.

Dimmock showed up, the idiot, with his little notebook and his superior attitude, asking questions John didn’t want to answer. Donovan stood off to his side, the absolute cow, sneering at him like a stain on her blouse. John addressed his snarkiest answers to her.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Yes.” Silence reigned for a moment while Dimmock figured out how to rephrase his question.

“What happened?”

“I jumped off the bridge.” Cold and cutting.

“Of your own volition? No one pushed you, goaded you, threatened you?”

“Why should they?” Sarcastic now, but no less cutting. “Why should anyone waste their time trying to kill me when I’m so eager to do it myself?” He felt Greg flinch under his grip. So did Donovan, finally managing to look a little contrite. Mycroft’s smooth pace faltered as he strode toward them. John gave his best glare of pure hatred, but the man looked supremely unconcerned.

At least it got the Dimmock and Donovan to go away, leaving John with Greg and Mycroft.

* * *

 

Watching John Watson dragged unwillingly from the icy Thames, Mycroft admitted to himself that he may have made a mistake. Perhaps he had spent too much time worrying about what knowing John Watson would do to his brother, how it would change him, make him vulnerable.

Not that that worry had been misplaced, after all. John had become a massive chink in Sherlock’s armour, one that had been exploited by Moriarty to great effect. It was for care of John Watson that his dear brother had faked his death and was now on the run, tackling the remainder of Moriarty’s network from the ground. It was John Watson that had made him turn against the main principle Mycroft had taught him, if only to keep him safe from the pain of loneliness and heartbreak; caring is not an advantage. That, Mycroft knew. How many times had he tried to make friends in school, only to be rebuffed as something unnatural? Enough. He’d only wanted to protect Sherlock.

John Watson was the kind of person who could make Sherlock care. Mycroft had known from the very beginning. The paradox of a doctor soldier, the interest of a psychosomatic limp, its source in John’s feelings of helplessness, the tremor that disappeared in the face of danger, all of it built into an exciting puzzle that could occupy Sherlock for months and years, possibly for the rest of his life. Then he’d shot a man to save another man he’d only known a day, and Sherlock lied to the police to protect him, and Mycroft had known it was the end of his teachings.

Sherlock had opened his heart and gained a weakness, and Moriarty had found it, and now they were all suffering the after-effects.

Especially John.

It was strange, how he’d never really considered John in all of it, other than as someone dragging his brother down. Oh, he’d appreciated John’s penchant for saving him, when he did something reckless, or keeping him healthy and away from the drugs that had nearly destroyed him, but John was still a weakness in his eyes. He never thought that, just maybe, Sherlock had been to John what he thought John was to Sherlock.

Casting his mind back, Mycroft remembered John at the very beginning. He pulled up an image of John the first time he’d met him, standing straight and defiant in the warehouse, no weight on his cane as he stared Mycroft in the eye.

How had he never seen?

John had had a mask, a shell that protected him from the outside world, just like Mycroft and Sherlock had built up from years of social ostracism and bullying. How had John come to have need of such armour? An unhappy home life, definitely. His sister’s sexual orientation and binge drinking, the reactions of conservative parents, an alcoholic parent to learn the behaviour from, likely his father, possibly abusive. Constant underestimation of John’s abilities as an officer and an army trauma surgeon, due to his unassuming demeanour. A demeanour built up through childhood to avoid catching the attention of an abusive father. A constant need to save those other people think of as helpless, because no one deserves to be hurt for being different, like he and his sister were.

How could he never have known?

Lost without being able to serve a cause, no longer qualified as a surgeon, John had turned inward, building up his shell until the loneliness became unbearable. Evidenced by his cane. Evidenced by his gun, kept nearby in his bedsit. John had shown suicidal tendencies before he met Sherlock, but not after. Saving Sherlock had saved him, and he had opened up to Sherlock the way Sherlock had opened up to him, like no one had ever seen either of them do before. No wonder less observant people thought they were romantically involved. They seemed to exist only for each other.

So, while Sherlock had merely been forced away from John for a while and into hiding, John Watson had had his entire world ripped away, and he didn’t even really know why.

How would Mycroft react if he suddenly lost everything worth living for?

Mycroft Holmes, the man who made a living out of knowing everything that could possibly ever be of importance plus a little more, had to admit he did not know.

* * *

 

Sherlock knew why he kept going back to speak to John in his mind palace. It wasn’t something he’d ever admit to himself, but he knew.

What’s more, he couldn’t stop knowing. It was useless knowledge, cluttering his mind and weighing him down, so why couldn’t he just delete it?!

After yet another failed attempt to get rid of a fact he wouldn’t even admit to himself, Sherlock found himself back in his chair, facing John.

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” he asked softly. Sherlock only shook his head, unwilling to talk about it. John pushed on. “Are you trying to punish yourself? For losing the game?”

“I didn’t lose,” Sherlock spat. “Moriarty is dead. I won.”

“Moriarty killed himself. He died on his own terms, forcing you to follow through with at least the appearance of a suicide. That’s a Pyrrhic victory at best.” John’s voice was calm and reasonable and Sherlock suddenly hated it.

“Why are you here?!” he shouted. “Why are you in my head? Why can’t I get rid of you?”

“Why do you keep trying?” John countered. “It was a part of you put me here, why do you keep fighting yourself?”

“A useless part of myself,” Sherlock shot back. “A weakness I have no use for. I part of myself I can’t control.”

“Is this some sort of self-hatred thing, this punishing yourself?” John looked at him carefully. “It is,” he decided. “You want to be punished for what he made you do.”

Sherlock had nothing to say to that, nothing that could disprove the truth.

“You want self-hatred?” John asked rhetorically. “Great, I can do that. I’m part of you, yeah? Just a mental construct, after all. You’re just talking to yourself.”

“Please,” Sherlock scoffed, “I accepted that fact long ago. You’ll have to better than that.”

“Oh, I haven’t even started,” John promised darkly. “You’ll hate yourself for what you did to me in the end.”

Sherlock clenched his hands, afraid of the darkness his own mind could throw at him, things he had no way to counter. John leaned back in his chair, a perfect image of casual conversation that scared Sherlock even more.

“Do you remember what I was like in those first few days?” he began. “When I had the cane and the depression and the gun I kept _oh so readily_ available. I wasn’t paranoid, Sherlock. It wasn’t to protect me. You know that much, you could see it in my eyes in the beginning.”

John’s eyes had been like empty pits.

“And the end, too. You saw it when I spoke to your grave, and you know it was you that put it there this time. And that hurts, doesn’t it. That _burns_ you. You might even say it burns the heart out of you.”

Sherlock flinched back from John’s words and the cold voice he spoke them in.

“So let’s do a little conjecture, shall we? The last time you saw that look, saw me leaning on my cane like that, I used to stare down the barrel of my gun every night. There, I’ve already displayed a suicidal state. And you don’t really know when I stopped, either. Maybe you should ask when you come home.”

Sherlock buried his face in his hands, guilt crushing him inward, but John wasn’t done.

“If I’m even there to come home to.”

“Why are you doing this?” he choked out. John surged forward in his chair.

“Because you wanted it!” he roared. Then, softer, “Because, somewhere in your mind, you know you need it. There are things you’re making yourself not think about, connections you refuse to make when you’re questioning yourself.” He took a breath. “Why are you doing this, Sherlock? Running around, living rough, hiding away…why are you doing this?”

“Because I have to take down Moriarty’s web before I can go back to London,” Sherlock replied, confused. Wasn’t that obvious?

“No,” John told him, not accepting his answer. He looked at him kindly, a little sadly. “’I was so alone, and I owe you so much.’ Remember that?” Sherlock nodded, struck again by John heartfelt words at his grave. “Why are you doing this?” John asked again, gently. He would only accept the truth, and Sherlock was forced to admit it.

“Because…because I love you.”

* * *

 

John’s fingers tightened briefly, a crush grip on Greg’s elbow, and let go as Mycroft approached. Greg growled internally over the way the man couldn’t seem to leave well enough alone.

“Doctor Watson,” he greeted as he got to them. John said nothing, back to staring blankly at his hands.

“I told you to leave, Mycroft,” Greg warned. He remembered the anger that was always hidden in John. Even now, it wasn’t gone. If anything, it was a lot closer to the surface. All he needed was someone to take it out on.

Someone other than himself.

“I merely wished to speak to Doctor Watson,” Mycroft dismissed him easily. Greg tensed. “I am pleased you are still with us, John.”

John didn’t even blink. Mycroft looked vaguely uncomfortable.

“I do believe things will turn out alright in the end,” he tried.

That got a reaction.

John leapt at him, faster than anyone expected. Before Greg could even blink, John had hauled off and hit Mycroft square across the jaw. Mycroft stumbled back, nose bloody, and John grabbed his lapels and yanked him forward again.

“NO IT WON’T!” he screamed into Mycroft’s face. “It won’t be ok! It’s not ok, because HE’S NOT HERE!”

He sagged forward suddenly, his anger gone, and it scared Greg and Mycroft ten times more than his anger had. John buried his face into Mycroft’s suit and cried bitterly.

“Why isn’t he here?” he asked, his voice as small and lost as a child’s. “Why isn’t he here?”

Mycroft could only stare at Greg, blood flowing from his likely-broken nose. Greg could only stare at Mycroft as he did something Greg would have staked his life savings on never happening.

Mycroft didn’t step back. He didn’t pry loose of John and try to stop the tears with empty, meaningless words. Instead, he wrapped his arms around John and held him tight, letting his expensive suit be soaked and ruined with Thames water and tears.

And Greg finally admitted that maybe, just maybe, Mycroft Holmes was human too.

* * *

 

Sherlock was going insane. That had to be it. Why else would he hear John’s voice outside his mind palace?

_Have you checked the roof?_

“Too obvious,” Sherlock whispered back. John always asked the obvious things.

_They aren’t all as clever as you want them to be. They aren’t all Moriarty._

“I know that,” he hissed back, “but they’re cleverer than that.”

He barely pulled back in time to avoid the bullet that embedded itself in the concrete wall near his head. The angle of the shot came from the roof. The roof Sherlock hadn’t checked.

_Everyone does the obvious sometimes, Sherlock. Boring or not, the roof is a good place to put a shooter._

“Shut up, John!”

* * *

 

Greg spent hours staring at the broken man. He came before work, and he came after work, and the nurses had given up trying to chase him out at the end of visiting hours long ago. They just let him sit and stare.

John looked so much better when he slept. All the pain seemed to go away. He didn’t have to drag himself through life anymore. He just slept. Sometimes his eyelids twitched.

The tapping of the umbrella heralded the arrival of Mycroft.

“No change,” Greg said without looking up. He didn’t need to see to know Mycroft would be staring at John too, standing by the door in his three-piece suit, umbrella by his side.

“I know,” he replied.

“Of course you do.” What else could Greg say?

“I’m having him moved to a private clinic tomorrow.” Now Greg did look up.

“Why?”

“He’ll wake up far away from Baker Street. No more reminders for a while. He can recover there.”

Neither of them acknowledged the fact that the entire plan hinged on John waking up again. He’d already been out for over two weeks.

“His sister gave you the go ahead to do that?” Mycroft’s umbrella tapped in what counted for him as a display of anger.

“Harriet Watson has expressed her wish to cut all ties with her brother. She has instructed me to do whatever I think is best.” Greg gaped at him. “Legal procedures are beginning to make me his next of kin and give me power of attorney.”

“Wow,” Greg sat back. He turned back to John. “Might be best you didn’t hear about that, mate.”

“Quite,” Mycroft agreed softly. “She is not the caretaker that John is. It seems two attempted suicides is too much for her, on top of her own…difficulties.”

“Drinking herself into the grave, yeah,” Greg scoffed. “Why’d you have to try again, mate? We thought we were done dealing with overdoses when Sherlock got clean.” He took John’s hand gently in his. On the other side of the bed, Mycroft did the same.

John didn’t stir.

* * *

 

_Did you sterilise it first?_

“I don’t exactly have the time to find soap and water, John,” Sherlock gritted out, tearing makeshift bandages from a stolen shirt with his teeth.

_Then find something. Infection there will kill you easily._

Sherlock sighed. Of course John was right. The knife had caught him along the ribs and deep on his hip. An infection there could cause him to lose his leg. He hissed as he stood shakily, feeling all three fractured ribs protest at once. He staggered off down the dirty Sarajevo alleyway in search of something. Anything, really.

_There. Do you see?_

“See what?” Sherlock planted a hand on the wall to hold himself up.

_The drunk, passed out on the left up there. He’s still got half a bottle of vodka left._

“Alcohol will kill foreign bacteria,” he murmured. Of course, why hadn’t he thought of it?

_It’ll hurt like bloody fuck._

“I expect nothing less, John,” he replied. “Can’t hurt much more now anyway.” They both laughed darkly at that.

_You can’t expect a knife-fighter to always go for the throat. It’s too obvious a target and one that’s too easily defended. You’re more likely to catch hands and forearms when they react. An experienced fighter goes for the gut. No ribcage, bigger target, lots of soft stuff to damage._

“Yes, thank you, John. Next time I’ll be sure to wrap my arms around my stomach and expose my throat instead.” John chuckled fondly.

_You and your throat. Your neck in general, actually. A great big target, it is, and not just for knives, either._

Sherlock frowned.

“What?”

No answer.

“John, what about my neck?”

* * *

 

“Nothing?” Greg leaned forward in the plush leather chair. “Absolutely nothing at all?” Mycroft opened his mouth, but hesitated. “Spit it out, Mycroft. Tell me all of it, ‘cause I’m just as deep in this as you are.” Mycroft nodded.

“Of course, yes,” he agreed, then he seemed to steel himself before continuing. “His recall is perfectly normal up through his last tour in Afghanistan. It’s after he was shot that it has become…unreliable. He remembers the hospital, the infection, and most of his physiotherapy, but not much after until he regained full consciousness again at the clinic.”

“Jesus fuck,” Greg muttered.

“Indeed,” Mycroft echoed, and at any other time it might have made them both smile.

“He doesn’t remember Sherlock at all?” he asked, just for clarification. Mycroft seemed to chew on his words before spitting them out.

“Not on the normal course of the day, no,” he said. “He is understandably distraught at his lack of recall, but he has no memories he can find of the last two years, nor how he came to be in a coma at the centre in the first place.” He clasped his hands on the desk before him, a calm gesture belied by his white knuckles. “However, he sometimes has…episodes.”

Greg stared at him.

“Flashbacks?”

“In a way,” Mycroft allowed. “They are not like the flashbacks he has from his PTSD. After all, he can still remember the war. His episodes are more like…sudden, intense bouts of the emotions he felt just after my brother passed. Very much like he was after his attempted drowning.”

Greg’s eyes flick down to Mycroft’s nose, still crooked after John broke it.

“How ‘intense’?” he asked. Mycroft frowned.

“The staff tell me he needs to be sedated every time.”

“Shit,” he whispered. “What sets him off?”

“As near as can be told, anything he might have especially linked to Sherlock,” Mycroft said through his frown. “Words and phrases, mostly, though on one occasion it was blue scarf one of the nurses tried to give him for Christmas.”

Greg had a sudden flash of memory of Sherlock looping his jewel-blue scarf around his neck.

“Words and phrases,” he muttered. “That could be pretty much anything! Any of them could accidentally sound like Sherlock and trigger him.”

“Precisely,” Mycroft sounded proud of him, almost. “That is why I want to have him released. No,” he stopped Greg with a raised hand, “I will not send him back to Baker Street. However, he cannot be left on his own either, if only because he will attempt suicide if he has a serious episode without someone watching him.”

“But,” Greg wrinkled his forehead in confusion, “who’re you going to put him with?” Mycroft looked at him pointedly. “Are you serious? I’ll set him off all the time! He can’t stay with me.”

“He does not seem to react to people,” Mycroft countered. “I have visited him nearly every day since he regained consciousness, and he has not had an episode in my presence. Furthermore, you knew Sherlock well enough to avoid anything deeply connected to his personality and mannerisms.”

Greg had to give him that. He could do a mean Sherlock Holmes impersonation, so he knew exactly what not to say around John. And if he didn’t react to Mycroft, it was pretty unlikely Greg would set him off.

“Yeah, alright,” he agreed. “With Linda gone it’s just me now anyways. I could use the company, ‘specially if it’s John. But what about when I’m at work? You know John, he needs to be doing something. Feeling useless isn’t going to make him any better.”

“Of course,” Mycroft inclined his head in a way that said he’d already thought of all of this and had his solutions in place as they spoke, but for once it didn’t feel smug, just prepared and natural Mycroft Holmes. “I have a place created for John as a governmental private doctor. At the very least, he can treat black eyes and set bones for the Secret Service trainees. Rest assured, he will always have work to do.”

“Good,” Greg nodded. “Yeah, good. Well, I’d probably better clear out the spare room, yeah.”

“Indeed,” Mycroft said, rising to shake his hand. “And Greg,” he called, stopping the man at the door, “thank you.”

“I owe them,” Greg replied, not turning around. “John and Sherlock. I owe it to them both.”

“We both do.”

* * *

 

_One down, two to go._

“If you must be clichéd about it,” Sherlock replied fondly, his heart still racing.

_Check him. You were a bit off on the aim._

Sherlock crouched down and felt for a pulse at the man’s thick neck. Nothing. The man who had been assigned to shoot Mrs Hudson was dead.

“Does it bother you at all that I’ve killed people now?” he asked.

_I’ve killed people._

“I’m fairly certain that is the point of a war,” he joked, high on the adrenaline.

 _There is no point to a war_ , came the dark reply. _Besides, I actually meant back in London. I killed a man for you the night we met, remember? He wasn’t a very nice either, a bit like our sniper there._

“Not a nice man at all,” Sherlock agreed. “And a bloody awful cabbie.”

* * *

 

Mycroft was suitably impressed by John’s skill as a doctor. Of course, he had expected nothing less from someone with John’s temperament, personality and good references from former commanders. John Watson was a man who took care of you, whether you wanted it or not. Again he was struck by the perfect fit he was with Sherlock.

Again he was struck with the guilt that he had never seen it before.

It was the incident that occurred nearly a year after John had lost his memory that made Mycroft admire John not only as a doctor but as a soldier and an officer. From then on, Mycroft swore he would regard John as his own brother. They had both lost their siblings, in a way. They could be their own family, the two of them and Greg.

John had, in his own quiet way, managed to ingratiate himself with the Prime Minister. John’s calm professionalism and easy manner had struck Mr Cameron when he had accidentally twisted an ankle and struck a door frame one day, but it was John’s wit and occasional bouts of gallows humour that drew them together. From then on, John had become the private doctor for the upper crust of the British Government.

The assassination attempt was a desperate act of a home-grown terror cell angry at some perceived injustice, but they had been extraordinarily lucky. A few shots, more chance than aim, had taken out the Secret Service on the Minister’s left side, and one had struck Mycroft’s leg, dropping him as well. He could see Anthea trying to reach the Minister’s side and call for backup and keep Mycroft safe all at once.

But it was John Watson, unassuming John Watson of the knitted jumpers and slightly over-steeped tea, that had immediately yanked a handgun from one of the downed agents near him and lined up his shot, blocking the line to both Mycroft and the Minister with his body. His first shot went off and he turned directly to the secondary shooter and took him out with a single bullet, too.

Then, still scanning the windows and rooftops, he ordered the chaos around him into order and got them inside, hauling Mycroft bodily through the door. It was the first time Mycroft had experience Captain Watson, and he was deeply impressed. John took up command like Mycroft put on a suit. It fit him perfectly, and he radiated confidence and power. Even the agents around them, men trained extensively for that very job, deferred to him.

Sitting with his leg elevated and Anthea applying pressure, Mycroft watched in mild amazement as John worked, the cane he still used forgotten on the pavement outside. No one had any second thoughts about obeying his orders as he ripped shirts to tie tourniquets and stuff words. Fortunately, none of the three agents hit had received fatal wounds, but John treated each one as if they were dying in front of him, alternating speaking to them in a gentle voice and calling orders like any battlefield commander.

“He’s good, Mr Holmes,” Anthea commented, eyes also fixed on John.

“My dear, he is singularly excellent,” he corrected.

John Watson had tea with the Royal family the next day. After several weeks of tea and luncheons and dinner invitations, the Queen counted John among her greatest friends. She knighted him for his birthday. Between her and the Minister, they gave him a Sig Sauer and special license to carry it as well.

If they thought it strange that he could not remember the two years of his life after the Army, it was never brought up.

* * *

 

“I thought so,” Sherlock commented as he watched the man turn an interesting shade of purple. The convulsions finally ceased after several minutes.

_And I’m sure it has nothing to do with your own desire to see someone die of anaphylactic shock._

“Well,” Sherlock replied.

_Of course it did. Happy now?_

“Immensely.” Sherlock grinned, shimmying out the window and dropping to the balcony below. The sun was just coming up on the tiny village in northern Spain, the golden light touching skin that had become faintly tan and dusted with freckles over his travels, glowing through hair cropped and dyed ginger.

_Moran now?_

“Yes,” he agreed. “Moran now. Last rumoured to be in England.”

_Almost home._

“Almost home,” he repeated. “Once Moran has died slowly and painfully for ever daring to set his sight on you.”

_Oh, Sherlock. You’re just a hopeless romantic inside._

* * *

 

Greg shut the door to John’s room gently, already dialling. He paced until the voice at the other end answered.

“Yes, Greg?”

“Do you know why I just had to sedate John?” He kept his voice low, but it was full of a cold anger.

“I assume something must have triggered an episode,” was Mycroft’s smooth reply.

“He found his blog. ‘Stumbled across it,’ he said.” He was in no mood to play polite with Mycroft. “How did he manage to find his blog?”

The silence on the other end of the line was a damning as any words could be.

“Richard Mycroft Holmes, you tell me why I had to sedate my best friend because he managed to ‘stumble across’ his fucking blog!”

“I…my apologies.”

“You better have a damn good explanation,” Greg growled. “A man who can send us both off to Italy for two weeks right when Sherlock’s name was cleared doesn’t just forget about John’s blog, so it had better be damn good.”

“I do,” Mycroft promised.

“Good.” Greg cut him off. “You tell me when you come over tonight. And bring dinner with you. Indian.”

“Yes, of course.” They were quiet a moment, Greg letting his anger dissipate, Mycroft awaiting another outburst. When one didn’t come, he ventured on. “Did he attempt to harm himself this time?”

“No,” Greg collapsed onto his couch, rubbing at his neck. “He was catatonic when I got to him. Nailed me in the gut a couple times when I touched him, and then he sort of curled up and started crying and that’s when I stuck him. No harm done, really. Knocked the air out of me a bit, but I’ve had worse.”

“I’m certain you have, Detective Inspector,” Mycroft chuckled briefly. “I am truly sorry, Gregory.”

“Yeah, I know,” Greg sighed. “I just hate seeing him like that, you know? He’s so broken and he doesn’t even know most of the time.”

“I know.”

* * *

 

“It’s done,” Sherlock whispered in wonder. Two and a half years it had taken, but the last of Moriarty’s web was gone, and Sebastian Moran had taken his last breath with Sherlock’s hands around his throat. “It’s time to go home.”

_Sherlock, you can’t expect everything to be the same._

John sounded worried. Why did John suddenly sound worried? Sherlock thought John should be happy, he could go back to his real John now.

“Of course not, John. It’s been nearly three years. I might still be a fake and a criminal, if Mycroft hasn’t cleared my name. I probably won’t be able to work with the police ever again. I know it will be different.”

_No, I don’t think you do._

“What are you talking about?” Sherlock ran a hand through wild ginger curls. He would need to dye them back to their natural dark colour before he saw John.

_You made me bury you. You made me grieve and move on. You can’t guarantee I’ll want to go right back into our old life._

“Of course you will.”

_No, not ‘of course’! Sherlock, what if I got married?_

That stopped Sherlock in his tracks. His hands, running energetically through his hair, fell limp by his sides.

“…What?”

_That’s what I mean. You haven’t had any contact with Mycroft since you left, you have no idea what’s been going on at home. I could be engaged to a woman, I could be in prison, I could have run off to Gretna Green with Mycroft and Lestrade as our best man._

Sherlock growled. No way his cake-eater brother was running away with his John!

_I could have decided it was all too much years ago and shot myself in the temple._

“Stop!” He clutched at his head.

_Call Mycroft first. Let him warn you._

“I…alright,” he whispered. “I’ll go to Mycroft first.”

* * *

 

Mycroft was buttoning his shirt when the knock sounded on his door. He frowned at himself in the mirror. It was early for the car, and besides, the driver never knocked on the door to his rooms, he waited in the entry hall. Something of a personal matter, then, but the knock was three taps, not the sharp two his staff used. Who?

“Come in,” he called, sliding the tiny pistol from its place beneath the edge of his dressing table. The form that pushed back the door was tall, dressed in clothes that had seen better days and topped with wild dark curls, pairing oddly with a faint tan and freckles.

“Evening, brother mine,” came the deep voice. “A bit casual for you, don’t you think?” he said, gesturing to Mycroft’s half-done shirt and the jumper draped over the chair nearby.

Mycroft could have punched him.

Instead, he made a call.

“My apologies, Greg. I don’t know if I’ll be able to come tonight. I’ve been,” he looked at Sherlock coldly, “rather unavoidably detained. Something I need to clear up. Of course. Yes, I do wish it could have come at another time,” another cold glare. Sherlock frowned as he sat gracelessly on Mycroft’s settee. “Yes, lunch will be fine. Yes. Good-bye.”

“’Greg’? You and Lestrade, really?” Sherlock scoffed. Mycroft finished doing up his buttons and pulled the jumper over his head. “Is that what the new look is about?”

“Inspector Lestrade and I have been thrown into close proximity by taking care of something you left behind,” he said calmly. Perhaps he would need to shock Sherlock out of his superior attitude. He needed to know what his actions had done, what Mycroft’s actions had done, to an innocent man caught in the crosshairs.

He needed to share part of the guilt that burdened Mycroft every day.

“Clearing my name? Yes, I did hear about that before I dropped by. Very nice, thank you both, I can come back from the dead much easier now.”

“I am not referring to your reputation, Sherlock,” Mycroft sneered at him. “You left a much bigger mess behind, without even a thought. Clearing your name was child’s play.”

“John,” he breathed, eyes growing wide.

“Yes.”

“What happened to John?” he demanded. “He was supposed to be safe after I died, that was the deal. What’s happened to him?”

“Oh, John is very safe,” Mycroft began, enjoying the power he had over his brother, “so long as no one says anything that reminds him of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Be quiet and I’ll tell you!” Mycroft snapped. Sherlock sat back, frozen. Mycroft sighed. “At your funeral, John made it very clear that he had no desire to see me ever again, and I chose to heed him. I did not think he was very important when you were gone.

“My mistake.

“The next time I saw John was in the back of an ambulance, after Greg Lestrade pulled him out of the Thames. He broke my nose when he saw me, and absolutely ruined my best shirt by crying on it. And I let him, because I realised something very important about John that night.

“You were as much John’s weakness as I thought he was yours.” Mycroft could stop his voice from rising, remembering the broken man in a hospital bed and all the times he’d had to be sedated before he tried to kill himself again. “You were his whole world, and then you were gone. What do you think you left behind, Sherlock? Because it certainly wasn’t a man. It wasn’t John Watson anymore.”

“Where is he? Is he alright now?”

“Shut up!” Mycroft roared. “I’m telling you now, so Sherlock Holmes, sit there and listen to what you’ve done!”

Sherlock shrank back in his chair, wringing his hands like a child. Mycroft jumped up and stalked away, staring out the dark window instead.

“He ended up with pneumonia from his little dip in the Thames that night. He seemed to be improving, so I allowed the nurses to take him off suicide watch.” He pinched his eyes shut. “He was just waiting for it. He got a hold of some painkillers and overdosed himself.” There was a noise from Sherlock that might have been a sob, but Mycroft pushed on relentlessly.

“The doctors got to him just in time, but on top of the pneumonia…it put him in a coma for twenty-six days. I had him moved to a private clinic for depression and suicide survivors. He recovered there. Physically, he is perfectly healthy, and, most of the time, he is content with his life.”

“’Physically’?” Mycroft turned to look his brother in the eye, ignoring the tears on his face.

“John does not remember you.” Sherlock let out another sob, pressing his fist to his mouth. “At all. Nor does he remember anything from your time together. His memory fades out just after he was shot and starts again after he regained consciousness at the clinic.”

“John…nothing?” Mycroft grieved for his brother, but it was nothing compared to the protectiveness he had come to feel for John, so callously left behind.

“It is good you came to me first,” he said, calmer now. “If you had gone to John…the damage might have been beyond repair.”

“What?” Sherlock choked out.

“We know that John still has his memories. It seems that, after two suicide attempts, his mind has…locked them away, for his own safety.” He paused. “Certain phrases can trigger…episodes, shall we say, where he feels all his grief and loss at once, and he must be sedated before he finally succeeds in following you into the grave. He has been living with our dear Detective Inspector since his release from the clinic.”

“Lestrade doesn’t trigger him?” Sherlock frowned.

“No, and neither do I. We watch what we say, of course, but sometime things still slip through. And of course, one cannot avoid the risks of daily life.” He paused again, this time for effect. “I believe one was triggered by a television documentary on the papal art collection.”

“Vatican cameos,” Sherlock muttered, hands winding into his curls and pulling. “My John, my poor John, what have I done?” he whispered to himself.

“Do not concern yourself too deeply, brother dear.” Mycroft affected a casual attitude, inspecting his hands. “Sir John is living a rewarding life as the Prime Minister and cabinet’s personal doctor and the Queen’s particular friend, and a national hero to boot. I have the pleasure of saying that dear John has personally saved my life, as well.”

“No!” Sherlock jumped up to paced wildly. “Don’t tell me he’s happy like that! That’s not John, not if he doesn’t remember me!” He stilled suddenly, looking at Mycroft again. “Is he happy?” he asked, childlike again.

“He is understandably still disturbed at his lack of memory of an important turning point in his life,” Mycroft returned, knowing it would rile Sherlock up. “He is frustrated by his psychosomatic limp, as well. On more than one occasion, he has expressed to me a wish that it would disappear, so that he might have a more active career. As much as he enjoys treating the colds and arthritic knees of the governmental upper crust, I believe he still longs for military life.” He chuckled. “He turns a rather adorable shade of pink when the papers call him ‘Sir John’.”

Sherlock did not turn any shade of pink. Instead, he turned an ugly, splotchy red of anger.

“You keep your sticky hands off him!” he shouted. Ah, here was the meat Mycroft had been searching for. Everything else had been just…gravy, and a few potatoes.

“Why should I?” he asked innocently. “He is such an interesting fellow. Have you noticed? An impossible puzzle, and he has such a clever wit, too.”

“He’s mine!”

“And why should you have claim on him, little brother?” he prodded, looking the picture of condescension.

“Because I LOVE HIM!” Sherlock roared. Mycroft smirked.

“Then we have a long road ahead of us, don’t we?”

Sherlock went utterly still as he realised he had been played.

* * *

 

Greg undid the top button of his collar and loosened his tie as he neared Mycroft’s office. Maybe Mycroft needed to look perfect and in control around here, but Greg sure as hell didn’t. He didn’t even need to look perfectly groomed at his own office.

He smiled at Anthea and pushed back the massive wooden door. He was met with the sight of one very dishevelled Mycroft Holmes, without his jacket, sleeves rolled up, elbows propped on the table as he glared coldly at the man at the other end of the table. Sherlock, on the other hand, looked singularly unconcerned.

Back up.

 _Sherlock_ looked. Fucking _Sherlock Holmes_.

“Oh, you bastard,” he growled as he stepped forward. He didn’t notice Mycroft moving until the man was holding him back around the waist. “I’m gonna fucking _kill you_ , and this time you’ll stay dead!”

“Gregory,” Mycroft’s voice was low in his ear, “calm down. Let him explain, first.” Greg whirled.

“Did you know?”

“Please, sit down and we’ll have lunch-“

“Did you know?” he demanded again. Mycroft looked away, and that was all the answer Greg needed. “You…how could you? You saw John! You saw what he was like, you were there when I dragged him out of that damned river! You’ve sedated him yourself, for god’s sake!” Greg ripped away from Mycroft’s grip and stalked to the window.

“I did,” Mycroft accepted quietly. “I disregarded John in favour of protecting Sherlock. I made a terrible mistake, and I have felt it every day since.” And god, Greg could hear it in his voice. “Will you attempt to attack me as well now?”

The silence was tense, brittle even.

“No,” he decided, sitting heavily in the chair between the two brothers. “No, I won’t.” His grin was absolutely feral, he could feel it. “I’ll wait for John to get his hands on you instead. He’ll likely break your nose again.”

“If he wants to break my nose again, I’ll let him,” Mycroft answered seriously. “Then I’ll let him have a chance to break every inch of Sherlock, if he feels like it. It will be but a small penance. I want John returned and happy as much as you do.”

“If you two are quite finished,” Sherlock interrupted stiffly, and Greg jumped at hearing his voice.

“Sherlock Holmes, you and I are nowhere _near_ finished,” he said lowly.

“The protectiveness you both feel about John is quite charming, of course,” he continued smoothly, making Mycroft’s eyes narrow, “but where is our dear doctor? I was under the impression he worked with you now, brother mine.”

“Fortunately, and due to today’s calm political climate, John is having a quiet lunch with the Prime Minister,” Mycroft returned just as smoothly. “Mr Cameron has become quite attached to him since John took out two snipers with a hand gun.” Sherlock frowned, but Greg and Mycroft both smiled smugly (perhaps they had been spending too much time together). “But you would know all about John’s skills, wouldn’t you?”

“What are you trying to prove, Mycroft?” Sherlock sneered.

“Nothing, I am sure,” the older brother protested. “Now, I believe the point of this luncheon was to prove your continuing state of existence to the Detective Inspector and give your explanation as to why your false death was necessary. Now that we have completed the one, might we move on to the other?”

Not for the first time, Greg admired Mycroft’s cool manner and silver tongue.

* * *

 

Sherlock stood to follow Lestrade out of the office, but Mycroft stopped him.

“What now?” he snarled. Mycroft was keeping him from John!

_Patience, Sherlock. Mycroft knows what he’s doing._

“I don’t think he does,” Sherlock growled lowly back. Mycroft raised an eyebrow.

_I think he knows a damn sight better than you do! You left me here to fall apart! It was Mycroft that had to hold me together!_

Sherlock flinched. Mycroft frowned.

“You can’t go meet John looking like that,” he said carefully.

“For god’s sake,” Sherlock muttered. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t relish the idea of holding John back from a murder-suicide tonight, simply because you have a fondness for tailored suits and wild hair,” Mycroft answered sharply.

_What have you done to me, Sherlock?_

“Though if you insist, you can have the honour of sedating him yourself -”

_This is your fault. This is because you left._

“- if that is what you wish.”

_Maybe you should have let Moran just shoot me in the fucking head. Maybe that would be better._

“Shut up!” Sherlock clutched at his temples, fingers fisting in his hair. “Please, be quiet, just stop, please, John, stop.”

_Or if you had really jumped, and Greg had let me drown in the Thames when I tried. Or the doctors hadn’t been so fast when I overdosed. Or if I had never woken up at all._

“No, no, no…”

_Would that be better, Sherlock? If I was dead? I certainly seem to think so!_

“No, John, no no no…”

“Sherlock?”

Mycroft’s worried face loomed over him, tugging his hands out of his hair. When had he curled up on the floor? And were those tears on his face?

“Myc?”

“Oh no, Sherlock,” Sherlock was tugged up and held tight by his older brother in a way he hadn’t been since their father died. “Hush, Sherlock, hush.”

Mycroft didn’t say that it would all be alright in the end. He didn’t say that he would work it out. He didn’t promise things he couldn’t deliver, and Sherlock was thankful for that. He gave Sherlock a chance to break down in safety, so Sherlock did.


End file.
